In Q2 2018, attempted infections by malware designed to steal money via online access to bank accounts were logged on the computers of 215,762 users, ransomware attacks were registered on the computers of 158,921 unique users.

In January, we uncovered a sophisticated mobile implant Skygofree that provides attackers with remote control of infected Android devices. Network worm OlympicDestroyer attacked on the Olympic infrastructure just before the opening of the games in February.

A monster distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against KrebsOnSecurity.com in 2016 knocked this site offline for nearly four days. The attack was executed through a network of hacked “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices such as Internet routers, security cameras and digital video recorders. A new study that tries to measure the direct cost of that one attack for IoT device users whose machines were swept up in the assault found that it may have cost device owners a total of $323,973.75 in excess power and added bandwidth consumption.

Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT publishes the findings of its research on the threat landscape for industrial automation systems conducted during the second half of 2017. The main objective of these publications is to provide information support to incident response teams, enterprise information security staff and researchers in the area of industrial facility security.

Companies around the globe are scrambling to comply with new European privacy regulations that take effect a little more than three months from now. But many security experts are worried that the changes being ushered in by the rush to adhere to the law may make it more difficult to track down cybercriminals and less likely that organizations will be willing to share data about new online threats.

On May 25, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect. The law, enacted by the European Parliament, requires technology companies to get affirmative consent for any information they collect on people within the European Union. Organizations that violate the GDPR could face fines of up to four percent of global annual revenues.

Looking back at a year like 2017 brings the internal conflict of being a security researcher into full view: on the one hand, each new event is an exciting new research avenue for us, as what were once theoretical problems find palpable expression in reality. On the other hand, as people with a heightened concern for the security posture of users at large, each event is a bigger catastrophe.

A technological boom in medicine both encouraged medical institutions to use exclusively information systems in processing data and led to the emergence of new types of technological equipment and personal devices that can be used to interact with traditional systems and networks. This means that the threats that are relevant for them can also be relevant for medical systems.

The third week of September 2016 was a dark and stormy one for KrebsOnSecurity. Wave after wave of huge denial-of-service attacks flooded this site, forcing me to pull the plug on it until I could secure protection from further assault. The site resurfaced three days later under the aegis of Google’s Project Shield, an initiative which seeks to protect journalists and news sites from being censored by these crippling digital sieges.

Damian Menscher, a Google security engineer with whom I worked very closely on the migration to Project Shield, spoke publicly for the first time this week about the unique challenges involved in protecting a small site like this one from very large, sustained and constantly morphing attacks.

One of the biggest cybersecurity stories of 2016 was the surge in online attacks caused by poorly-secured “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices such as Internet routers, security cameras, digital video recorders (DVRs) and smart appliances. Many readers here have commented with ideas about how to counter vulnerabilities caused by out-of-date software in IoT devices, so why not pitch your idea for money? Who knows, you could win up to $25,000 in a new contest put on by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

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The Mirai botnet, which is made up of IoT devices and which was involved in DDoS attacks whose scale broke all possible records, causing denial of service across an entire region, has been extensively covered by the mass media. Given that the botnet’s source code has been made publicly available and that the Internet of Things trend is on the rise, no decline in IoT botnet activity should be expected in the near future.